Left in the Dust: The True Cost of Following a Fool novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Deputy's Notebook

The deputy took the corner booth and asked for coffee, and my mother brought him a slice of pie with it that he had not ordered.

"Mrs. Haverty, I can't accept gifts."

"It's the pie of the day, Deputy. It's not a gift. It's a Saturday."

He ate a bite and set down his fork with a sigh.

Drew and I sat across from him, and my mother stayed at the end of the counter with a dishrag, pretending to wipe it.

"I'll be plain with you," the deputy said. "A complaint came in at nine fifty-eight this morning. It names you for assault on Keeley Satterlee. It's signed by her and by her mother."

"I never touched her," I said.

"I've seen the clip. The one that started at the fall."

"There's a longer one now."

"I've seen that one too." He took a small notebook from his breast pocket. "I saw it at eight-fifteen, before the complaint was even filed, because three people sent it to me."

My shoulders dropped.

"That's four minutes and ten seconds," Drew said. "It's the full thing. I have the original file, and here's the time it was saved."

I slid across his printed sheet and my own phone.

"And this is the audio I recorded in my pocket," I said. "It starts before she reached me. Her voice is on it. Mine too."

The deputy listened to it with one earphone from his own pocket.

He did not look at his pie.

When it reached the part where Keeley said, Say it again to my face, he stopped it and played it back.

"She came at you," he said.

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